In developing an electronic system, a number of different tools are sometimes used to debug the different components of the system. For example, a video analytic design includes a microprocessor, a hardware-based video processing pipeline including DSP modules, and several input/output (I/O) interfaces to external peripherals. Some DSP modules may be developed using a high-level modeling system (e.g., System Generator for DSP from XILNX, Inc.), while other modules are written in low-level hardware description languages (HDLs). Some DSP modules are emulated in hardware under the control of a hardware co-simulation tool. Other DSP modules written in HDL are simulated using an HDL simulator. A logic analyzer may be used to capture data that appears at the I/O interfaces of the emulated hardware. Still other modules may be implemented as software and an embedded system software debugger is used to debug the program.
In debugging such a complex system, the different tools may be used in sequence or concurrently to control the simulation and gather the desired data. However, working with the different tools and having to switch between them is cumbersome. Having to simultaneously interact with multiple ones of the tools is even more difficult.
The present invention may address one or more of the above issues.